WhyDidYouGo.com was created as a company and associated website in order to fully understand and promote employee workplace happiness. The co-founders launched three national surveys to explore what makes people happy on the job, why they leave jobs, and why they stay in jobs they hate. Each of these surveys generated data on what kinds of things employers can do to keep employees. Here are the five top strategies:

Offer career advancement and learning opportunities on the job

Lack of opportunities for career advancement is cited over and over as a reason for job dissatisfaction. Top performers want the work itself to sharpen their skills. Formal training is seen as a complement, not a substitute. Larger organizations may have the ability to move their people into different opportunities, satisfying the employee’s need for growth and the employer’s need for retention. Smaller organizations may have to be more creative, perhaps offering more breadth of responsibility and a flatter, more flexible organizational structure. Focus on your strengths as an organization, sell what you can offer, and then deliver on what you promised. But remember to be honest with new employees. Don’t oversell advancement and learning opportunities or you will achieve the opposite of your intentions: increased frustration and turnover.

Tip: Not all employees want or need to be promoted upward. Some are happier when they become more of an expert in their role. Others are motivated by having a series of interesting projects to work on. Have regular career conversations with your people – at least twice a year – to help them work out their career aspirations and how those aspirations can be aligned with the organization’s goals.

Invest in management training

Management is a skill, yet often people are promoted to management positions simply because they are good at their jobs, without any consideration of their management abilities. If you are considering promoting someone who has never managed people before, send them on a management training course first. Better yet, have their management ability aptitude tested. And don’t forget to turn this wisdom on yourself as well. Just because your title is ‘manager’, don’t assume that you are necessarily good at managing people. Consider training or coaching to improve your own management abilities.

Tip: Solicit feedback using a formalized process that will allow leaders an opportunity to hear from the people they work with and design a plan to make interactions in the workplace better. Most important, remember that feedback is useful only if the information is acted upon.

Communicate AND Act

People want to be inspired by the leaders they work for and feel aligned with the organization’s mission and purpose. Often, leaders participate in initiatives to define their organizational values on paper and then fail to communicate them and live by them. Ask yourself, what do we do that is consistent with our values? What do we do that is inconsistent? Remember, your actions are your most powerful means of communication.

Tip: As the last item on every management meeting, decide what will be communicated to the rest of the organization about discussions and decisions taken at the meeting.

Take all complaints seriously

High turnover environments are typically toxic places to work, exacerbated by the neglect of leaders. Poor behaviour repeatedly goes unchecked by the leadership until it becomes so commonplace it defines the organizational culture. If your people are complaining, consider this a gift and evaluate the situation objectively. Your bad-behaving manager may be a star, but if his actions destroy team productivity, you need to consider the overall bottom-line impact. Don’t spare yourself on this one either. If you are the leader of a high turnover team, take a good look in the mirror and consider if you are the one who needs coaching.

Tip: Do you have a formal complaints process in your organization? Employees need to know their issues are not falling on deaf ears. Simplicity is good here; any process that demonstrates listening and action will have a favourable impact on turnover.

Value your employees

People want to be valued. A simple thank you or pat on the back can go a long way in keeping your workforce engaged. A token gift certificate, given at the right moment, can have the effect of much more expensive measures. Sending a hardworking employee home early when you know they have an important personal event that evening can have the same effect. Valuing does not always mean monetary compensation; it’s the little things that count.

Tip: Find ways to make valuing employees a part of the corporate culture – something that will be noticed and appreciated by the employees, because they see it as an appreciation of them.

Louisa Jewell and Tracy Griffin are the co-founders of Why Did You Go, a consulting and coaching firm specializing in employee engagement and retention. Their vision is to improve happiness at work, one workplace at a time. For more information about their organizational retention programs, contact them at info@whydidyougo.com.